Thoughts off the Glass

Lent ……. Day Ten

Lent ……. Day Ten

“There is in the Community a Sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything…Each time I met her I prayed to God for her, offering Him all her virtues and merits. I felt this was pleasing to Jesus, (who) is happy when penetrating into the inner sanctuary where He chooses to dwell, we admire its beauty.” (Story of a Soul, 222)St. Therese of Lisieux

We all know who St Therese is talking about. It’s that one person whom we all have in our lives that just gets under our skin. We’re not sure why, we don’t remember exactly what it was. But they just have that way about them, their demeanor, that rubs us the wrong way. So what do we do? We treat them with apathy. No special treatment for them. In fact we may even go out of way so we can treat them as indifferently as possible. Why bother trying to figure them out. Why should we worry about their problems, we have our own to sort out.

Jesus usually sought out these people. He would ask “the sinners” to eat with Him. When I think of this my first thoughts are of Zaccheus, the tax collector, who was high in the tree because he wanted to see Jesus. You recall that Zaccheus was a smaller man so he needed to seek higher ground. Jesus, seeing Zaccheus, called him down and said “I’ll be dining with you tonight”. Nobody liked Zaccheus, he is a tax collector (not much difference today, nobody likes the IRS!!). What happened? Zaccheus then devoted himself to Jesus, vowed to repay anyone he may have stolen from and offered portions of his earnings to the poor.